“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!" (Matthew 23:23, 24)

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

UNBORN NON-PERSONS

“And they were bringing children to Him so that He might touch them;
but the disciples rebuked them.But when Jesus saw
this, He was indignant and said to them, “Permit the
children to come to Me; do not hinder them; for the kingdom of God belongs to
such as these.Truly I say to you, whoever does not
receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.”And
He took them in His arms and began
blessing them, laying His hands on them.” (Mark 10:13-16)We were discussing this
passage during a Lent Bible Study. The Bible study leader pointed out that,
according to some commentators, children in Jesus’ time and culture were
considered non-persons. Then he asked us to name some non-persons in our time
and culture. My immediate answer was,
“The unborn”. What people are thought of
as not being people more than the unborn? In the First Century A.D.,
when Jesus Christ walked the earth, the dominant culture in His part of the
world and well beyond was that of the Romans, who dominated other cultures and
peoples with their mighty empire. Apparently the Romans considered
children to be the property of their fathers. The father got to decide whether
or not his children could even exist as part of his family. A newborn would be
laid on the ground and if the father did not pick him or her up, they were left
abandoned on the ground to die or taken in by someone else. If allowed to live,
children were still considered property, like servants or slaves. Jewish children, as a rule,
seem to have received better treatment. However, the idea of children as
property was not absent, and Jewish families, especially poor ones, still
sometimes abandoned their children, though usually making sure there was
someone nearby who might take them in.In any case, the way Jesus
treated the children even His disciples wanted to turn away as unworthy, or at
least nuisances, was radical. He declared and demonstrated that children were
not only worthy, but that they were people that we could learn from and whom we
should be more like. Today, in most cultures,
including much of the institutional church in those cultures, unborn children
are considered the property of their mothers. Unborn child are seen as non
persons, body parts that have been added through conception to their mothers’
body. These spare parts may be removed from the mothers’ family at any time for
any reason, destroyed and disposed of before they can even be born. It is not natural for mothers and family
members to turn their children over to death. This is something they have been
taught to do by an abortion industry fueled culture of death that is over a
generation old. Our culture has taught us to be silent about this and even to
shout down opposition. We have learned the lesson well, even in the
institutional church. Now, as in the First Century AD, Jesus Christ
rebukes us when we treat children as non-persons and property. Likewise He
rebukes us when we treat children as less than human or even as lesser humans. Jesus
rebukes us when we directly abandon unborn children to death, when we give
approval to those who do so, and yes when we fail to speak out and stand up for
“the least of these”.In the United States of America and in many
other countries, we think (or we try to tell ourselves) that we are a civilized
society because of form of government, our “education”, our technology.

But a society in which people will in any way participate in abandoning the most
helpless among us to death is not a civilized society. The fact that those people call themselves
Christians makes them not more civilized, but less civilized. As Christians, Christ
calls us to be more than civilized, He calls us to be Christ-like, to be like
Him. He welcomed children and held them up as models of faith and what it means
to be a part of His Kingdom, The Kingdom of God. Jesus calls us to do the same.